The election of neo-fascist presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro is raising fears that Brazil could be the latest country hit by a wave of far-right authoritarians. Bolsonaro, though, represents something scarier than Donald Trump, the politician he is most often compared to. Following the election on Oct. 28, the world’s fourth-largest democracy is in danger.

Bolsonaro is a seven-term congressman who surged into the popular consciousness as a hardline law-and-order figure with outsider credibility because of the swirling crises that have engulfed Brazil over the past five years. His racist, misogynist, homophobic outrages are numerous and well-known. Horrifying as these are, merely repeating them does not tell us everything about why Bolsonaro was such an unsuitable candidate — and now will be an unsuitable president.

An editorial in the New York Times put Bolsonaro and Trump in the same league, but the U.S. is led by a politician who still enacts policy within the bounds of the law.

Indeed, his idolization of violence and promises to greenlight extrajudicial killings brings him closer to the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte than to the current U.S. president. An editorial in the New York Times put Bolsonaro and Trump in the same league, but the U.S. is led by a politician who still enacts policy within the bounds of the law, in and through American institutions. The so-called “Trump of the Tropics” is a gross misnomer.

Bolsonaro’s running mate, retired general Hamilton Mourão, suggests a Bolsonaro government would seek to redraft the 1988 Constitution, this time without any popular, representative input and stack the Supreme Court with additional justices. Attempts to strangle the constitution, such as these, put us in mind of other “managed democracies,” such as Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Turkey. “Constitutional dictatorship” is another term that could describe a post-Bolsonaro Brazil.

The upper-middle classes and the elite have long been animated by a barely coded class hatred that is fixated on the Workers Party (PT). This so-called “Antipetismo” fueled the move to impeach then-President Dilma Rousseff (a member of the Workers Party) on scant legal grounds. The parliamentary coup and break with democratic norms further delegitimized an already scandal-ridden political system. And the subsequent, disastrous rule of elite-backed Michel Temer spurred a radicalization of the right, with conservative voters abandoning their traditional parties in favor of the extremist Bolsonaro.

Worryingly, existing levels of violent crime could justify — and serve to mask — bloody repression. There were over 60,000 murders in Brazil last year. Police contribute to the bloodshed, killing thousands each year. Bolsonaro promised the special forces, whose emblem and cri de guerreis a skull, that their people would be included in the government, possibly suggesting a ministerial position for a special forces commander.

These aspects distance Bolsonarism from contemporary European right-wing populists. What unifies parties like the AfD in Germany, the Front National in France, the Sweden Democrats or the Italian Lega is that they all aim to politicize. For the past decades, Western societies have been ruled by “post-political” forms of management. Politicians justified themselves by saying: the experts are in power, we know best. Populism is a reaction that that declares: we, the people have different interests from you, the elite. In contrast, Bolsonarism signifies an attempt, by the rich and powerful, to sweep away all political division and to potentially do away with a democracy that includes those they feel should be excluded.

Bolsonarism signifies an attempt, by the rich and powerful, to sweep away all political division and to potentially do away with a democracy that includes those they feel should be excluded.

All of which is to say, Bolsonarismo stands alone when compared to its global far-right peers. And yet, if there is a unifying factor, it is that the new authoritarian right has gained prominence in the wake of the 2008 crisis. The reigning form of liberal democracy, triumphant after the Cold War, has become more difficult to sustain in turbulent times. The loss of legitimacy has not been capitalized on by the left, as one might have expected, but increasingly by the right.

Traditional establishments have been complicit in this anti-democratic turn. Eager to bolster a system that many citizens support less and less, even moderate elites avail themselves of authoritarian and nationalist measures.

From China to Europe to Brazil, the link between free market capitalism and democracy may be breaking. If so, genuine democrats face a fork in the road: cling to an increasingly anti-popular neoliberal order or defend democracy, warts and all.

EDITOR'S NOTE (Oct. 28, 2018, 9 p.m. ET): This piece has been updated to reflect the results of the Brazilian election on Oct. 28.

Alex Hochuli

Alex Hochuli is a writer, researcher and consultant based in São Paulo, Brazil. He is the host of the global politics podcast, "Aufhebunga Bunga," and is writing a book on the contradictions of "anti-politics."